once again, i’m stuck in a haze of my own making. it’s been so often these past few months that i find myself in a fugue of alcohol, work and exhaustion.

it’s the only way i can sleep at night.

but the point of this is not to bitch. hell, it doesn’t even reallly have a cohesive point, but rather is an entry point into my efforts at blogging much more.

because, honestly, i feel like i need to write, force myself to do so, or i will go insane. or more so than i already am.

i wonder if anyone reads this. i do all the time. but such is the life of a somewhat cocky young male.

but to get back to the point, this blog post is about love.

then again, everything i write, ever, has been and always will be about love. no matter how sappy that may sound. divorce my conception of love from any hallmark card, saccharine sweet amalgamation thereof. rather, my love, is, as always, born of tears and moonlight, heartache and last breaths. such is and always will be my fate.

love is suffering.

or rather, love is the willingness, the degree to which, one is willing to suffer pain for another. because love is always painful. without suffering, it is meaningless. a mother, a father, they are always willing to suffer for their children, if one can ever deem them good parents.

misery shared is misery halved, or so the wise men say. it is the job of one who loves another to take upon themselves the burden of another’s adversity, and make it their own. because in so doing, they lessen the weight upon the object of their affection.

i’ve always loved with a strength beyond my small stature. is it any wonder then, that i know pain just as well?

i’m a depressive. have been all my life. always will be.

but i hope, pray, wish, that someday, i will be able to overcome the Darkness that stalks me in the night… but will nevertheless retain my capacity for love.

because without great suffering, without building that threshold for agonizing punsishment, a person cannot, and will not, ever be able to truly love another person. such is the fucked up heart of love.

oh and btw, thank you for all those who email me, comment here or hit me up on facebook to tell me they read the blog, and they want me to continue.

you allow me the belief that my work actually matters, that my thoughts count for something.

you keep me sane.

thank you.

admittedly, i haven’t done much to counter the sickness, neither rest nor doctor’s visit. but whaddya expect? i got sick on the 4th of july, as far as i know, the biggest holiday in the city. dc loves the 4th like nyc loves halloween. so if i DIDNT come out, it would’ve been the type of shame that i couldn’t look down.

eh, shit like this is what they made sudafed for.

i have hella ish that i need to write about, considering i missed two packed days. but because i will have a 16 hour bus ride, and at least two hours worth of battery life, i’ll make a second update about the past two days and about dc in general tomorrow morning… written on the bus.

that's where i wanta live!

some photos, no matter how touristy, are obligatory

so on the 3rd, i did the museum thing… the freer gallery and the national gallery east wing with my homeboy camden, as well as a more general walking tour of downtown dc. i’d like to publicly thank camden again for taking me around and showing me the sites. what a great guide to the city! it reaffirms my belief that you really do need locals in whatever place you go.

as per usual, i was amazed at the beauty that is art. i fucking love the national gallery. it is AWERSOME sauce. admittedly, the east building is a bit bloody tiny, but getting to see the Nude Woman Standing by Picasso was… life changing. it really is an amazing piece of work, as are so many works in the national gallery.

who's that sexy bum?(and yes, i changed clothes)

what the hell is it with manet and horses?

the walls are closing in!

nudie!

i REALLY wanted to go to the national archives to see the constitution and the declaration of independence, but the line was too ridiculous.

even then, i had an awesome time being a tourist in DC.

real coney island dog? i think not.

but even more than that, even more than the fact that i’m sick, i keep thinking about meeting the hare krishna boys. they travel from state to state, setting up this festival of india fair grounds thing. it was ridiculo random meeting them, as me and cam were randomly resting in front of one of their tents when i found out some of them played a little bit of submission wrestling. me being me, i asked them what affiliation they were with and somehow ended up wrestling one of ‘em.

taking the back and looking for an armbar

god i am a midget

big dude by the name of hari gave me one hell of a fight for my money, ’specially considering i had trained for so much longer than he had.

but afterwards, all the hare krishna folks took me, which is weird, introducing themselves, sharing their food and beverage. honestly, in trading stories and experiences with them, it struck me how much i depend upon the kindness of strangers on this trip. the hare krishna boys, among others have really fundamentally renewed my faith in humanity. there is such an open generosity of spirit in the human character and i feel like that feeling was definitely embodied by the hare krishna boys.

the boys + ninja dude

(one of the guys in the above picture is a ninja. i mean dead serious. completely able to blend in the background. i’ll talk about him and natural talents some other time. dude scared the bejesus out of me)

it’s trippy… life is such a game of inches, full of weird circumstances. my life is especially so. random things happen, random things come together. or don’t. but thas my life. and i’m set adrift on this river of circumstance that reaffirms my idea that if there is a god or some great power guiding the paths of our lives… he/she/it has one hell of a sense of human. or i might just be a cosmic joke. either way.

they stole my haircut!

that night, after laundry of course, was artmoatic, this massive art festival/warehouse party, where i got to meet up with some of the folks i met at hay qua. whoa, that was dope, even if i hardly spent any amount of time there. and even if my first purchase was a glass of wine. but hey. it’s me.

i hella enjoyed the day. more discussion about it later, as well as about more philosophical things i’ve been thinking about, as well as my fourth of july hijinks. which was minddblowingly awersome sauce. and more about the hare krishna folks, of course.

plus, i’ll talk about meeting up with one of my friends in highschool, using that as a springboard for discussion of how people change or don’t change over time. and about wingmanning for her ditzy arse. i am awesome.

oh… and if you’re reading, please comment. it’s too often that i can feel just the tiny bit alone. or that this blog is a scream into the ether.

oh and if ANYONE knows ANYONE in nashville tenn, please connect us.

life is like a cold… more often than not you’re floating on a benadryl haze… and when you ARE cognizant, it mostly sucks.

there’s a coupla things i wanted to discuss, ‘specially since i’m suffering from insomnia. it’s the perfect time to address them.

first off, my decision to hitchhike at least part of my route. obviously there’s the money issue, but it’s more than that. one of the big reasons that i set out on doing this whole thing was because i really am fascinated with the country and want to see it, want to experience it, meeting people, hearing their stories, seeing strange sights… and hey, what better way than hitchhiking? i’m not going to hitchhike the whole thing because i’m depending on a lot of kindly people to house me and wanta keep to some sort of schedule for them, but when it’s hostels or national parks or bus stations that i’m sleeping in, why not hitchhike?

sometimes i feel like this country is divided into a bunch of smaller countries. in some ways that was the entire point in the federal system. but (and this sounds cheesy as hell) we are all ostensibly tied together, one people. as such, i want to experience that in a really fundamental way.

that and i figure i’ll get better food by hitchhiking than by traveling by bus.

“i know you’re wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear / that your perfect verse’s just a lie, you tell yourself to get by.” – postal service –clark gable

secondly, more grandiosely, whatever that means, i wanted to discuss why i write this. primarily, (and yes, i know i’m doing lots of mini-lists tonight) it’s an exploration, a process through which i get down thoughts and allow myself to explore them in a format that requires at least some modicum of analysis. on another level, it’s a practice of writing, of putting together sentences, even if they aren’t poetry or academic work. it’s a practice that keeps my mind sharp and my writing skills eloquent (or so i’d like to think). and of course, on some level, like all writing, it’s masturbatory. the process of petty immortalisation, especially in this paradoxically ephemeral and eternal medium. and hell, it is fundamentally pretentious to feel that your writing has a value that others can recognize, that others would wish to engage with, that you have some part of the truth in you, that your overuse of the word ‘that’ is a stylistic quirk rather than the failings of an insufficiently erudite mind.

in the end though… what matters is that this gives me some satisfaction to do. it allows me to examine parts of myself that too often lie unexamined. and until the moment i stop gaining utility from the blog i’ll keep writing and hope that you’ll keep reading.

in keeping with that… i just wanted to tell all of you to stay tuned to this page for updates on my odd-yssey. i’m going to be posting a rough schedule of where i’ll be and when. also, i’m going to try to update the blog everyday or whenever i get internet access in order to a) keep you all assured that i am happily alive and b) so that i can have a thorough journal of my experiences.

but once again i am putting the call out, if i am goin to be anywhere near your neck of the woods, throw me an email or sommat and i will meet up with you. if you have a couch or a spare room or know someone who does or know a nearby hostel, get at me. more than that, i just want to see you, see new faces in new places and experience the diversity that a change in geography can bring.

life is the momentary blip of light in the dark expanse of eternity.

do you know how some people see sounds? they perceive music as an array of colours because of whatever strange connection has been made in their heads. though mostly this is is discussed in relation to the physical senses, i have something similar with emotions.

when i feel an emotion, there’s a tint in the back of my mind that colors everything. when i feel an emotion coming offa person through my physical senses, there’s a subtle flare of colour around them. it sounds weird, but it’s something i’ve grown up and kinda like. it’s unique. which seems to be a goal all its own in this city.

i guess why that’s the reason i describe poetry using the painter metaphor. we are painters, emotions are our paint, every subtle shadow corresponding to the exact nuance of a feeling. i’ve said it before, i don’t like using words like love or hate in my work without some sort of qualification. what kind of love? what kind of hate? what does it mean to have a hate for a person once loved? a hate born from seeing those you care about being hurt by the target of your disdain?

i’m still trying to convey that complexity in my work. it’s hard. one’s control of language, one’s technical skill is the tilt of the head that makes the Mona Lisa forever haunting. i’m learning it as i go, trying to build from traditions before me, but this shit ain’t gifted. it’s earned.

though, i do have enough of the romantic (the era, not the gift card) in me to see the poet as special on some level. maybe it’s my own arrogance speaking. but at the same time, there’s great technical illustrators that are still unable to convey any depth of feeling in their work.

i guess i’m rambling again.

my days have been stormy, the wind and rain that seeps into your bones and steals even the ghost of warmth or light from your being. then the tempest arrived, destroying the mud wattle buildings i’ve built up. now… the calm has come.

that specific calm that comes in the wake of devastation. the feeling of resignation that somehow still allows one to continue with one’s life. maybe the exact shade of emotion as the man who knows his cancer will kill him, so chooses to live his life as he wills. the specific gradation that belongs only to the boy who realizes that these three guys are going to kick his ass, so he might as well grab onto one and keep swinging. the swirling peace of a woman who is finally able to leave and be done, after too much time and investment in an awful affair.

—————————————–

colours

a mother’s love, an earthy red
oceanic in its depth
and temperament.

the feeling of the first nice day in spring
the pastel yellow of the sun
seen through freshly dusted douche goggles

infatuation is the whiteness of halogen lamps
haloed by a blinky, misty red, blinding
so that all else is relegated to the periphery

the satiated guilt of indulged gluttony
is the white of institutional light
reflected from the melting richness of vanilla ice cream left out

the contentment in the willingness to wait
is noon sun through a teal window pain
dust motes idly dancing

an adolescent’s frustrated rage
is the intense, pulsating red
of an infected cut

the frustration of hard work proved wanting
the sandy red-brown of the specific layer
of pit dug in the desert that is just kissed by moisture

a parent’s grief is a blurring
a twisted distortion of colour
that strips the senses of perception

the desire for cold vengeance, pallid
blue-grey of apprentice’s iron
fit for plowshares, forged into a sword

interpersonal ambivalence, the blue black green
of healing bruises, timorous
in its betweeness

quiet resignation is the ochre red
of dried blood, spilt and wasted
without recourse

a boy’s artsy-pretension depression, the cliched
inky blackness, thick with its self-imposed weight
a hungry dark, its smoky contrails reaching

my love for you, even now
the brown-gray of petrified wood, no longer alive
but always persistent

yeah, i’ve had a long day. those types of times that drain you, of energy, of joy. maybe it was just ‘cuz it was a shitty day outside today. then again, i go through periods when everything’s hunky dory and then periods where everything’s bloody awful. i can see that as a near universal. we are all at the whim of the wild fates, bend and weave to the wiles of their wings.

if you can’t tell by my poetry, i’ve been hella fascinated with alliteration recently. there’s something about the way the sounds just roll off the tongue that gives me a simple aural pleasure… what billy collins believes should be the first thing you look for in a piece of writing.

on some level, i agree. if it doesn’t read well, if the first few lines don’t grab you, you’re probably not going to want to go through the entirety of the poem. you might do it anyways and thereby find yourself pleasantly surprised… or you might do what i do, skip ‘em over till i have nothing else better to read.

c’est le vie. i’m going to try to make it to jits tomorrow, work off the excess emotion. sweating has a cleansing quality all its own. and working off my aggression is always nice. but bloody hell, so much work to look forward to. at least there should be more sun soon.

and it’s kinda ironic how fascinated i am with 80’s hair considering i think i’m going to get my mohawk back tomorrow. we’re ’sposed to be agentful beings, i know… but sometimes, i feel like i have so little control over my life and the things going on around me. thas when i get haircuts, because hell, i might not be able to control everything, but at the very least, i can cut my goddamn hair.

yay mohawk!

now from that high, back down to a low. for whatever reason, i’ve been writing hella emo poems. at the very least though, i hope they still present multi-dimensional characters, still have some decent imagery, some fun sound and most importantly, some connection to the greater.

tell me what you think.

——————
april 6th

chi dem, co ngay gap ma

the touch of ghosts
like the ache
of a last kiss or the touch
like mortality, the memory of illness

she told him she could love him no longer

his moods, more a burden
than she could handle, her shoulders
too narrow to hold a tempest
the sunflare of her temper
too hot for his inconsistencies

he drinks

she painted his portrait
with water colors, he wrote her love poems
on napkins and by email
they declared their love
under an unlucky moon, eyes
like will o’ the wisps

he fights

she caresses the purple cataracts
like twilight starbusts
across pupils and knuckles
visiting hours ticking away
through the iv, he courts danger
like he had eyes for no one else
she left him once before, but always answers
his call

he cheats

sleeps with women who fall
for his sleepy eyes, futile ego-stroke
and she forgives him
once, twice, too many times
her attempts to punish him
backfiring like misloaded bullets
or the vain cutting across forearms

he smokes

she says she quit, but can’t
knows he hasn’t even ever bothered to lie
only tells her
he loves her when his voice slurs
his head lolls, forgetting
he’s broken. her muse
splayed across the bartop

he tell hers, he needs her

and she weeps for a moment
mourning a fantasy, all she tastes
in the dregs in his stout glass
the fortune she reads
a signal to wander on, lips set
fists clenched tight enough
for fingernails to pierce

her phone left
in the bus station bathroom

his languid arm reaching for shoulders
and finding emptiness enough to startle

——————————————-

life is a process of humbling.

it’s weird what you remember at odd times. as i was writing the original draft of this piece for yday, i was thinking about what my father told me… that back home, there was no meat anywhere to be found, relatively little of any other veggies, because he grew up in the hill land in the middle of vietnam. like hill peoples in other parts of the world, his region was poor as hell, the lack of fecundity causing the folks out there to depend on daikon to feed they families. like the irish with potatoes, they found a hundred hundred different ways to prepare daikon, it was fundamental to their cooking, to their way of life.

along with this, came the memory of my asking him how the hell the vietnamese managed to shrug off the yoke of french rule way back when. my father told me vietnamese are goddamn good in a fight, ’cause we’ve been fighting since light dawned on people, since lac long quan and au co went their separate ways. conflict is what we’re good at. we’re stubborn, we’re tough and we’re broke, so we can always make do. he went on to explain that this is also the reason why we can’t rule ourselves for shite… and why when you get a lot of vietnamese people in a room, give them alcohol, there will inevitably be at least four-five fights by the end of the night.

oh my people.

btw, fuck vivid dreaming. i had one of the most bittersweet dreams last night. woke up with a broken heart. shit was awful. i want normal people dreams.

i will be slamming tonight, 6 o clock at the bowery poetry club. you should roll through if you have time, i’d love to see your faces.

also, my team, Ronin Athletics, will be completing at Naga today, so wish ‘em best of luck.

april 3rd

daikons, donnybrooks, processed meat

dolan’s eyes widened
in incredulity
as i folded three weeks worth
of now-clean laundry, crammed it
into just one sports bag,
my smirk replied, if you think this is good
you ain’t ever seen asians on a road trip.

i remember my father and mother insisting
that because we were an american family
we’d eat meat with our meals, that their children
would have what they didn’t,
so the taste of spam, canned tuna and eel
eggs and devil ham
wreath my childhood like the aroma
of my mother’s heavy hand with the garlic

my father’s family back generations
could not coax anything but daikons
from the stubborn, war-weary womb
of their hills, so they made a hundred, hundred recipes
for daikon, depended on it
like the irish on potatoes, because hill folk
can always survive

i was too lazy to go to ikea
to buy bookshelves
so i made my own

… in a gas station bathroom
my friend david made good use of the wall street journal
after too much wack-ass chinese food

the vietnamese used rifles scavenged
begged and borrowed
to rise against the french, had no uniforms
‘cept what they could scrounge,
no armour but faith in the cause
with such they beat a power

david’s uncle hates his life
but will not abandon his family, his job
as a line cook in a pho restaurant
so every night, he drinks a bottle of cheap cognac
till now his face is splotched red
with cirrhosis, his sweat reeks with fermented sweetness
but he has never missed a day of work, his children
have food every night, clothes on their backs

they call ‘em field expedients
yah make do with what yah got
my life is full of ‘em

but you do what yah gotta with what yah got
it’s in my blood.

and my head keeps spinning, can’t keep having these visions, gotta get wid it

love.

casanova fucking by the copacabana, the sheer weight of the word is like mountains, like duty itself. yet, its glibness, the way it falls off the tongue, like pennies and peonies strewn haphazardly, with nothing but a grin at the way the sun hits petals and tarnished bronze just so.

love.

the source of childish laughter, drunken debauchery… of murders and masterpieces, the joyful spontaneity of a groaning exultation, the anguish that can drain away years in a few mere moments. what we all say we’re looking for, what we’re all so afraid of getting. the source of envy enough to launch a hundred thousand ships, the fire that illuminates the night even after the bombs have taken off all the lights.

romantic-fucking-love.

jeebus. why would i be discussing such a subject? oddly enough, because of a goddamn sitcom. a pilot at that. how much of a sap am i? but really though… i was going through one of those moods, the existential crises that drain the joy out of life, that makes you doubt the rightness of whatever you may be doing. not depression, that’s too much credence to lend it, rather a sense that there’s more than this life you’re living has to offer out there somewhere. maybe.

watching tv to try and take my mind off it, i saw the new abc show cupid. it was about a guy… who was either a man who had suffered such a fundamental heartbreak, so earthshattering and life-splitting that all he could do to cope with the force of it, that shock that took breath from the lungs, was to come up with the delusion that he was cupid or eros or whoever, the ever so fickle god of love. or maybe, it was really was the demi-god himself, the real cupid, punished for fucking his job up and now left to wander the streets of new yawk city until he can match up 100 couples with true love.

(as an aside, let me just say, fuck the way they treat the city… we really aren’t THAT devoid of wonderment and romance and the soft mushy things. hell, i would even argue that new yorkers are hold onto that delicate, transcendent part of themselves even more tightly than anyone else… is it a crime that we protect it more? we hold it more dearly, because we know how ugly the world can really be. the city runs you down, but thas why you grasp onto the idealism inside of you and hold on for dear life.)

i have a cigarette to pass the time, because the traffic is hell

but yes… to return to my point. i was watching this show, in my funk, and honestly, as i was watching it this smile crept across my face like a soldier creeping across no-man’s land. it was just too cute. i couldn’t help but enjoy it, i was powerless under the assault of its saccharine fancy. and it of course, cheered me up immensely, but more importantly, it made me think about love, which i’ve been tried to break down all these years anyways.

so here it is… my definitions of various expressions to describe it, ‘cuz dude, i’m just a boy… do you think i really give you the secret that haunts us all?

crush – a mild attraction that may or may not motivate enough effort to approach the object of affection, but is sufficient to be source material for both fantasy and for adolescent boys maybe something else.

lust – if’n you don’t know the definition of lust, you’re either a-sexual or pre-pubescent. if’n the latter, you shouldn’t be reading this blog anyway and tell your parents they should be bloody well monitoring your internet usage. if’n you’re the former… thas like trying to describe this to a blind man, or moonlight sonata to a deaf man.

infatuation – that stage, when you’re teetering the edge of sanity. sure, your OOE may not take up every thought of your day, but you sure as shit have the desire to call him/her entirely too much, especially considering it’s all a game. you savour the smell of their hair, the shape of their nose, the curve of their neck… and you know that in a blink, it can become all-consuming, if’n only it moves just a little bit more. or it can go completely the opposite way, and all of a sudden… it’s over. you’re bored. it’s done. this is where boys like me get stuck on.

in love – the phase where you can truthfully plead temporarily insane… that all consuming fire and passion and insanity that makes short shrift of anything so mundane as personality compatibility, credit reports or ‘other’ commitments. this is the stage where emotion is a drug, more insidious and ambrosial than anything else, that which the best quality MDMA is nothing but a pale ghost of an imitation. the wildness, the fascination of it, when you can’t help but ache, down deep when you’re not with your OOE, when your whole world, your very perception of life itself has narrowed down to this one person. when the locks of her hair caught in your towel, the ham-handed way he handles wine glasses, when those define your world. everything else is burned by the blow-torch intensity of it all… but… with that much more risk of burning out.

love – that stage, after the oil has taken the charcoal of your soul and burned away and what is left burns with a much more subtle, but steadier depth. that which is able to last, maybe even endure past the rain and the lack of oxygen. this is the stage of love that they say abides, where your perception of the world is able to see more than your OOE, but nevertheless, it like you yourself now cannot be defined, from now unto forever without your OOE. two plants, in nature, occasionally lean onto each other until they start becoming entwined, occasionally going so far as growing into one. this is where that starts.

granny love – … no you dirty mo’fo, this is not a porno title. it’s that place when someone becomes so fundamental to your life that they make it up. i don’t even know how to describe this, as i’ve never be anywhere near it myself… but we’ve all seen it.

settling – when you have none of these, but you make a relationship go anyway, if for no other reason then not wanting to be alone. and maybe, just maybe, it’ll become real love someday. for now though, this life is too hard, the trials too great to not be halved, the joys and triumphs too meager to not be doubled by sharing.

… maybe i’ll do more in the future, if’n anyone wants me to. as is, i’ve already taken up too much of all yous valuable time.

so au revoir.

we keep on pavin’ over paradise, because we’re only human

life is the awkward moments when you’re awake. whoa.

“excuses and half-truths and fortified wine, i know it’s unlikely she’ll ever be mine”

i’m laying here on my stomach as a i write this, my back all sorts of bent out of shape. in rather great pain and only semi-mobile at best.

oh wrestling, how i missed thee.

if’n you know anything about wrestling… the following explanation will make sense, if’n you don’t, then i’ll sum up and put it in layman’s terms afterwards. i had shot and was under a sprawl, was sitting out hard while going for a single-leg or a highcrotch. as i sit out, my knee pad slips and my back twists in all sorts of awkward directions. so here i am, all injured, having pulled a muscle in me back rather hard. bloody hell.

translated: i fucked up my back wrestling.

which is absolutely perfect, as i will be helping a friend of mine shoot a movie early tomorrow morning. and especially since i had made the pledge to work out at least a little bit everyday. but i persevere like a man’s hands will, getting tougher for the nicks and the callouses and the dirt engraved.

this post is/will be full of all sorts of wo/andery, i know, but i felt like i needed to write today because i hadn’t written in so long. it was necessary. i’ve been caught up in school and life and just trying to figure out my path, a naïve novice of an astrogator trying to find my way through the stars, with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a lopsided love affair on the other.

considering how much the last few sentences have been overwritten, you can obviously tell there’s a deep desire within myself to write, fancifully and romantically, with a shaky smirk and floating, flying fingers.

the fact that i’m almost immobile and therefore have no outlet onto the world except my words has nothing to do with it. really.

but at the same time, writing, if not rambling onwards, is a fundamental part of who i am, it’s a muscle within myself that links together and holds up so many other things, but if it isn’t used, it starts to ache and atrophy.

hence posts like this, that go nowhere and always end up back where they started.

but not yet, not until they’ve navigated some inner waters, stirred up the bottoms and made murky the clarity that comes with shallow perceptions. so let me link something that i’ve only recently discovered and grown rather fascinated by, Schott’s Vocab. It’s a NY times blog that defines and traces the origin of a bunch of random turns of phrase in our vernacular. it’s really kind of dope, especially considering my fascination with language. it shows us straight out how fundamentally mutable english is, how dynamic it can be as a living realm upon which human beings building meaning however they can.

which reminds me that i need to stop using academic speak in real life conversations, because really… “therein lies the issue” and “problematic” are not phrases you should be hearing outside of academia… and when you do, they’re like a slap in the face, both for me saying them and you hearing them. balls.

if anyone was wondering about the title, it’s a reference to a friend of mine’s blog. i think i’ll be making a lot more subtle references to the people in my day to day life as i go on. it’ll be full of teh lulz.

but all things, good, bad, come to and end, and so does this blog post.

with me, on the floor of my one bedroom apartment in pain, wishing you all the happiest and safest of saturday nights. wishing you libations and throwaway love affairs, grins in your gin and fingertips barely brushing. i’ll try to post more… not let such huge gaps come about as they once did.

life is an in-joke with one hell of a punchline, however you wanta interpret that.

i’m back in boston for break, and it’s… been an experience. especially as i’m also writing a midterm and my thesis. what fun. thank god for copious amounts of ca phe sua da. goddamn have i missed easily available, high quality vietnamese food. i’m gon’ get hella fat, but that’s what zhoo zhitzu is for. which reminds me, first day i’ve been back playing for months and months. yall should be proud. and i’m even writing again. bounties will never end.

i’m lying of course. they always do.

i’ve already talked about the issues i’ve been having and ain’t gon’ rehash it. so les leave that aside.

the night after i came back, East Meets Words, an asian am open mic series in boston had its fourth anniversary, which was trippy as hell, because i was there for the
first one. way back when, it feels like ages, because at least in my development as a person, it has been.

coming face to face with the changes within myself over the years, because i see it within the space and the people that have defined east meets words for me, was at once one of the most traumatic and one of the most hopeful experiences of my life.

it’s crazy to say but it’s a beautiful thing to see change, to see people growing and developing… especially as i am unfortunately one of those people who is not as good as i should be at the whole keeping up thing. too often, it really is out of sight out of mind for me, so seeing these people that i really do and truly love, with all the depth of emotion that i have, seeing how they’ve grown and how they’ve developed, even as i have, is…

there are no words for it. it’s heartbreaking because i wasn’t here to see the changes, i wasn’t here to see them at their weakest or there for their triumphs, i wasn’t
there to halve the misery or to double the joy. and on some level, it’s trippy seeing everyone developing their own separate lives, pairing off and becoming grown ass folks, while i’m still a kid more often than not.

but at the same time… what a fucking great night. even with my issues, what a goddamn great night. what a huge, happy, appreciative crowd. it’s events like this that made me a poet in the first place, that got me in love with performance, with crowds, with that affair between artist and audience that is at once symbiotic and parasitic… and which is too often likely to break your heart.

the beat collective rocked it. there’s no empty words for me to use to describe how bloody amazing they were, how much they saved me from myself.

now i wish i didn’t stop learning the violin all those years back.
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can i just say… fuck needing a car.

i realize now that part of the reason that i love new york city is because there’s an inherent, unquestioned freedom in a city that never sleeps, where there’s always a bar or a club or adiner or a fucking bodega that is open. there are always people out there. no matter how alone you are, and nyc is the loneliest city in the world, there’s someone out there to drown your misery with or something to do to forget for that little moment. there’s space to run, run so that you know that you’re alive, run so that your demons can’t catch up with you, at least for a little while.

i don’t have a driver’s license, so whenever i come back to boston, i regret it ever the more. it might even make me get a driver’s license. which is probably not going to happen, both because of laziness, but also because i do have my principles.

but sometimes, i just wanta run off and wander, and it’s so difficult in this city. it’s annoying to say the least. i love having trains that allow me to get anywhere in the city whenever i need to get there. it makes life so much easier.

maybe there’s a woman out there, a boston girl with a car, a romantic’s heart and an eye for the beautiful. a girl who likes long drives, late at night, philosophical discussions over whiskey and black humour who can love a poet boy with a paunch from good food, good drink and merry making… who has his demons and his darkness, his bad times and his sardonic jokes and has a propensity for wandering, in all senses of the word.

epic lulz.

btw, can i just say… i miss my mohawk. and i’m not drunk on saint patrick’s day, i’m not sure whether to be proud of or ashamed of myself. but goddamn do i miss my hair. shaved heads are nice and all, but goddamn and i know this i’ve said it twice and i’ll say it again, goddamn i miss my hair. time will heal even that wound, won’t it?

also, i am soliciting descriptions for that banner on the top right of the page. if you want to contribute, ten words, + or – 2. i’m keeping the ones that i find to be clever and just insulting enough to fit my ‘unique’ sense of humour. if you can call it that.

life is one of those jokes you just don’t get until it’s way too late.

administrative stuff first. as usual, i’m calling out for both gigs and contributors to the site. i’d love to book a show whereever you are. ’specially if you’re at a place i’ve never been. and secondly, i’ve love to have more writers here. i’m adding another friend of mine to the blogroll, going by the pseudonym harleyquinn. she’s lived on the west coast, lived in the best coast, was raised in a place with no coasts but lots of cows, seen the world. she’s as bitter as i am, as romantic as a nightingale singing in flight and has the right combination of mania and fatalistic humour that always seems to resonate with me. i’ll be pressuring her and sheeptang to post more to make up for my short comings. please continue to remember contributing to asian women. and if anyone wants to send me penpal notes like some of you have done, then please feel free to do so. i don’t know how long it’ll take me to reply, but i will.

i’ve had some really amazing pen pals in my time who’ve managed to teach me more about myself and about human nature than i could believe possible. it’s always nice to add more, ’specially since i’ve gone through… drama with some and fallen off with others. at any rate, all the pen pals i’ve had and kept in contact with have always been dope, beautiful souls and great writers. it’s nice to vibe, without the exigencies of the body to mediate text and meaning. it removes tensions and adds layers of meaning. or maybe removes layers of confusions and misunderstandings, thereby allowing us to come closer to the truth of ourselves.

fair warning, this is hella emo post. hell, i buzzed off my mohawk and have a monk’s fuzz. you know it’s bad when i shave my head.

so i haven’t posted in what for me is a long while… firstly this is because it’s a hectic time for me, as it is for pretty much every other student in the united states. secondly, it’s because my laptop keyboard is hella broke, which, because i do most of my writing at home, has slowed down my creative output pretty badly.

finally… it’s because i’ve been going through rough bit.

it’s a cliché, but then, like bukowski says (in now,ezra,), we always write in cliches, say the same things when we’re trying to touch the divine. mainly because there is no divine, there is only the human, those bits of ourselves, dark, light, in between, that we all share. and it’s the lucky writers who manage to speak to those universals, those shared spaces in a way that’s just the tiniest bit different, has that much more nuance to the entire thing. so as i come to reexamine cliché, i find myself not as afraid to use it. they become cliches for a reason after all, we do all understand what we’re talking about when we’re using certain phrases… they have all the familiarity of your home’s bathroom door, that you somehow manage to navigate yourself to even through the dark, as familiar as the crutches a man uses when he’s discovered that which carries him has atrophied and all he has left are his crutches, as familiar as reaching for a long time lover in the half-sleep that comes in the wake of night terrors.

misfortunes always come together like hurricanes, the confluence of fate-winds that meet almost perfectly together to somehow form torrential downpours and gusts that scour the soul. it’s never a single piece of bad luck, one stubbed toe that breaks down the human creature, we’re too resilient for that. it’s the combination of misfortune, that addition of burden that is never additive, but always exponential. (yes, the kid who almost failed the sped math class just made a math metaphor. epic win bitches)

so mischances and mishaps have left me here, all torn asunder, like a florida town after a particularly horrific season. the windows of my life battered and cracked, the detritus of my everyday scattered and strewn. with the odd quiet, that sleepiness in the air that only comes after catastrophe has hit, the misery of hopefulness, of having to rebuild, no matter that you know that you should, that you can. the fear that it will all be futile.

but then again, it is seasonal. i go through my moods. and i call them that to hark on some form of artistic pretension, to touch that part of you, the reader, that has accepted unto the point of cliché, the artist and his moods, his sensitivities. that is not to say that i’m not a sensitive dude, i am. i can be as touchy feely as the next, and i have my passions, that come with all the force that i apply to any portion of life i care about.

but it’s more than that, it always has been. i’ve pulled a hikikomori these past few days, locking myself in my room and leaving only to eat. or to drink. only able to function once i’ve managed to fill myself with enough uppers that to not leave my apartment would be even more maddening than what already inhabits me.

les face it, my moods are not just moods, passing fancies. they’re the moments that have such a powerful confluence of painful shocks and grinding burdens that the storm proofing that i’ve done all my life is not enough. the boards over the windows that i’ve constructed out of the flimsy resilience of duty and of lasting fancy are torn, and the the full brunt of tidal waters floods in, to take away that which i’ve sequestered, locked inside of myself and cherished. and the blasts drag my past up like malignant zephyrs, to hail them once again on the battered sidings that my father put there with his own hands. the careful arrangement of my mother’s garden within myself, torn all asunder. the photos and snatches of workworn prophecy and poetry that i’ve stolen, cribbed and cherished from each and everyone of you, tainted by devastation that only comes when one has given up plugging the holes in the walls, consigns what one has built to the maelstrom and hides oneself in the basement.

yeah. sorry, i’ve been emo recently. and emo to say that words have power, and if one is able to call a tiger a kitty kat for long enough, maybe one will come to believe it, and the fear of it is no longer so frightening.

i’m a depressive. i admit that.

but as my father reminds me, as i beg him to, i also have duty. it’s what i am. so fundamental to the core of my being that i could not imagine myself without an understanding of duty.

i’ve been fixated on salt recently. not on salt in and of itself, but being worth my salt. roman legionnaires were once paid with it, because it really is essential to life… and if you took that from another man, you were expected to be loyal, to do your duty. hence, “being worth your salt.”

ain’t no man ever gon’ say i ain’t worth my salt, ain’t know my duty.

life is the art of the possible, and the denial of reality.